Categories: Food & Wine

Dog Food Review: Rachael Ray’s Nutrish

Rachael Ray is known throughout America to be a great chef and TV host. So when she came out with her dry dog food, Nutrish, expectations were high. And while the products packaging is very appealing, the public has not totally jumped on board the Nutrish train. I have already seen it at a discounted price at Wal-Mart and Giant Eagle. So, interested in the product I finally went to Giant Eagle and looked at a bag. On the front, it displayed a picture of Rachael ray cooking at the stove and her handsome dog isaboo sitting patiently for her home cooked meal. It also lets customers know that it is made “with real beef and brown rice” or “with real chicken and vegetables.

To the untrained customer this sounds great! But most customers don’t know much about AAFCO and their strict rules on labeling. One rule is more commonly known as the 3% rule, or the “with” rule. It states that when ingredients are put on the bag to be shown off to the customer, they must use the word “with” when the ingredient is less than 25% of the total weight. The most it has to be is 3%. So, when we look at the front of the bag again and we see that it is made “with real chicken and vegetables” we now know that there is less than 25% chicken and, most probably, a little more than 3% of vegetables. To make our argument a little more concrete, lets take a look at the ingredients.

Rachael Rays Nutrish Chicken and Veggies- Chicken, Chicken Meal, Brewers Rice, Corn Meal, Soybean Meal, Animal Fat (Preserved with Mixed Tocopherols), Corn Gluten Meal, Brown Rice, Oatmeal, Dried Beet Pulp, Natural Flavor, Dicalcium Phosphate, Salt, Calcium Carbonate, Dehydrated Alfalfa, Dried Peas, Dried Tomatoes, Dried Carrots, Potassium Chloride, Choline Chloride, Olive Oil, Vitamin E Supplement, Zinc Sulfate, Ferrous Sulfate, Iron Oxide, Dried Parsley, L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate (Source of Vitamin C), Mixed Tocopherols, Niacin, Manganese Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, D-Calcium Pantothenate, Biotin, Sodium Selenite, Vitamin A Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Menadione Sodium Bisulfite Complex (Source of Vitamin K activity), Vitamin B12 Supplement, Potassium Iodide, Cobalt Sulfate, Folic Acid.

So normally I would say that the first two ingredients were good and that since we have Chicken and then Chicken Meal (chicken with the water and fat taken out) we could have some confidence about the amount of meat in the dog food. But since we know that the total chicken percentage isn’t higher than 24%, that confidence is gone. On top of that when we factor in that “chicken” is 70-80% water, our confidence goes down even further. If you do the math, the highest the percentage of chicken could be is about 16%, and the vegetables are around 3 or 4%(Salt was above the individual vegetables on the ingredient list) Now lets take a look at the other ingredients in the list.

Brewers rice. Here is the definition that AAFCO gives us: “The small milled fragments of rice kernels that have been separated from the larger kernels of milled rice.” This grain is already processed and is missing a lot of the nutrients that whole grain rice or brown rice have. Brewers rice is also much cheaper than whole rice and is used primarily as a filler.

Corn Meal. The majority of people believe that corn is a horrible grain that has no nutritional value and causes itchy skin, ear infections, and liver problems. While all these things have happened because of corn, and it has been shown to be one of the major allergens to dogs, it is wrong for us to assume that corn WILL cause these problems for your dog. But just to be safe, i usually stay away from products with corn.

Soybean meal is defined as,” The product obtained by grinding the flakes which remain after removal of most of the oil from soybeans by a solvent or mechanical extraction process.” “This is a poor quality protein filler used to boost the protein content of low quality pet foods